Blake Harris is a historian of the video game wars. His first book — Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that defined a generation — came out in 2014 and it chronicled the fight between Sega and Nintendo in the 1990s as Sega stole a march on Nintendo with the launch of the Sega Genesis. The book was written in a dramatic way, and it was licensed for a film adaptation by Hollywood directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. That book’s success let Harris quit his day job as a Wall Street trader, and it enabled him to research his newest book, The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the revolution that swept virtual reality. Harris spent more than four years on the book, with close access to Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus as a 19-year-old living in a trailer in front of his parents’ house. After Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 for nearly $3 billion, Harris was able to get exclusive access to the executive team to chronicle the revival of … [Read more...] about Blake Harris talk — How ‘The History of the Future’ almost didn’t happen
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How I became pen pals with the kid who stole my iPhone
I’d always wanted to go to India. So I was pretty outraged when, in 2011, my iPhone went without me. I think it’s only fair to place around 5 percent of the blame on my friend Blair. A group of us were in a London wine bar pretending to be grown-ups, searching for more sophisticated ways to say “second-least-expensive bottle” while tossing around wine terms we’d heard in a semi-ironic attempt to impress our waiter. “Oaky.” “Fruity.” “Hmm… chewy.” Hard Fork? Hard Fork. HARD FORK What actually did impress him, however, was Blair, a man so charming he wins people over basically just by being present. The waiter rewarded his charm by bringing us the leftover wine from other people’s tables after they’d left; a quarter bottle here, a half bottle here. Now this one is really nice… I was drunk, is what I’m saying. Was there a professional phone thief pilfering smartphones in that bar? Or did an … [Read more...] about How I became pen pals with the kid who stole my iPhone
Why the Grammys sound amazing and sometimes go wrong
Michael Abbott has overseen audio at the Grammys for decades. It’s an extremely high-pressure position, so I expected Abbot to have the personality to match. But when I met him in the hallways of a trade show last month, I immediately noticed that he carries a cool, laissez-faire demeanor. It’s disarming, which made it easy to forget how elite his resume is — at least until our conversation started. After pleasantries were exchanged, the first thing Abbott said caught me off guard. “I have a reputation preceding me,” he chuckled. “I’ve done so many amazing things, and have been involved in some debacles as well.” Not only has Abbott mixed and produced audio for shows like The Voice and Shark Tank, but he’s also done presidential debates and awards shows, such as the ESPYs, the Country Music Awards, and the Oscars. These are some of the most prestigious broadcasts on television, and it can be easy to forget how much work goes into … [Read more...] about Why the Grammys sound amazing and sometimes go wrong
Vaulting ambition: how Fallout 3 changed the game
One of Joel Burgess’s proudest moments as Fallout 3’s lead level designer was giving a big “Fuck You” to players. Literally.It started when the team realised, only six months or so before release, that the map felt too small. They had used The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion as a template for how big the map should be and how often players should discover points of interest – but where Oblivion had forests and mountains to hide far-off towns, Fallout 3’s flatter world meant that you could see landmarks on the horizon, which made them feel closer. “The tone of Fallout doesn’t work if it’s not a bit lonely,” Burgess tells me. “The rate of discovery was a bit high, and we wanted to thin that out.”It meant the team had to add around 20% to the map in its north-west corner. Burgess describes it as “one of our last big scrambles”, and it mainly involved shuffling existing locations. But it also added fresh … [Read more...] about Vaulting ambition: how Fallout 3 changed the game
iOS 12 Review: What’s now for what’s next
Smartphones and mobile operating systems were originally designed to converge the past. They replaced our phones, personal digital assistants, portable video and music players, gaming handhelds, and GPS units into one, small, always-connected package. And it was good. Now, smartphones and mobile operating systems are in a race for the future — not just to define it but to predict it. Surfaces can now read our fingerprints. Microphones can understand what we say. Cameras, who we are and what we're doing. Machines can also learn to anticipate what we'll do and want and when. Consequently, our devices have gone from reactively recording and retrieving only the information we've given them to trying to "know" us and proactively provide us with a range of information and services right before we realize we need them. At the same time, we live in an era where the largest internet companies in the world have told us our privacy is effectively dead — and are now being forced to … [Read more...] about iOS 12 Review: What’s now for what’s next